Jurassic World And The Race For Mediocre Reboots

With dino expectations and hype, you’d have figured that a movie the scale of Jurassic World would at least try to go above and beyond the typical CGI-fests cluttering the cinemas these days. Unfortunately the execution wasn’t so great. Jurassic World has seen a record-breaking release for a couple of weeks now (reaping a whopping $400 million in only ten days) and as the dust is settling, the critics are mixed and the fans deem it a half-decent job as far as entertainment-packed 90-minutes-dinosaur-delights go. The box office success does not tell the complete tale of the movie’s worthiness though.

With an influentially epic franchise like Jurassic Park, which has had a long lasting cultural impact on the film industry, it is only natural to expect something awe-inspiring for a sequel 14 years in the making. But epic isn’t the word I’d use for the reboot of the series.

Jurassic World is geared more towards filling out check boxes on the standard-big-budget-entertainment bucket list and somehow still falls short of the standards JP had set. It does give a hearty attempt to make up for its shallowness with exciting CGI visual moments like the Mosasauraus gulping down the poor Pterosaur or when Zack (Nick Robinson) and Jack (Ty Simpkins) enter the restricted area in the hamster ball, or when Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) heads off on his bike to trace the scent of the IRex, but the predisposition towards striking a nostalgic chord with fans of the original Jurassic Park seemed to be nauseating.

Fans of the movie might argue that at the end of the day, Jurassic World is still an enjoyable watch and knows exactly what it wants to achieve, but I’d like to point out that we rich-spectacle reboots like these almost every year (with mixed results). The movie was probably great for JP loyalists and younger viewers.

I am 10% more entertained than I was by the Smurfs movie

There is no harm in having ‘joyride excitement’ movies like these, but we should insist and expect more from film makers. Sadly, the ludicrous financial success for Jurassic World would entice film makers to opt create more such reboots, where their focus would be on relying on CGI and appeal to the PG13 crowd for success rather than creative storytelling.

Mad Max: Fury Road, on the other hand, is a recent example of an action packed yet plot driven movie which actually carries the legacy of its predecessor. The movie shows that follow-ups can actually fill in the shoes of their forerunners. It carries that perfect harmonious blend between story and action, something which Jurassic World could have done.

Franchises like Bourne, Hangover and Matrix started off nicely but at some point in time their sequels became pointless drags which devalued the original franchises. For a movie like Jurassic World, one can expect the movie to earn the franchise good enough moolah, mainly because it has a strong brand name with good popcorn entertainment, but this won’t be a movie to be remembered for the ages.